Egyptian General Moves to Formalize Presidential Bid

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

March 4, 2014

CAIRO — Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi edged closer on Tuesday to formalizing his all-but-declared candidacy for president, telling a military academy audience that “procedures will be finalized over the coming days.”

“I cannot turn my back when the majority wants me to run for president,” he said, according to the official news media.

Field Marshal Sisi, the defense minister, led the ouster on July 3 of President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first fairly elected head of state and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Although he was little known previously, Field Marshal Sisi has ridden a surge of popularity since the takeover and is now universally expected to seek and win the presidency, in elections set to take place this spring.

Many Egyptians have embraced him as the embodiment of a promise of stability and progress after three years of turmoil since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak. But the field marshal has also led a brutal crackdown on his predecessors’ Islamist supporters, and the suppression of dissent has increasingly extended to liberal activists and intellectuals as well.

Almost nothing is known of Field Marshal Sisi’s views on any other matters of public policy, including the make-or-break question of how to revive and restructure Egypt’s dysfunctional economy. But so far only one other candidate, Hamdeen Sabahi, who also supported the military takeover, has expressed an intention to run, and Field Marshal Sisi is by far the favorite.